Can 4 Hyped Titles (Finally) Deliver With Gameplay? Hands-on @ E3

We finally got our hands on some of the most anticipated titles that have showed up from E3 to E3—Killzone 2, Spore, LittleBigPlanet and Too Human—to give them a hard look as they make their way to stores (probably).

LOS ANGELES -- By now, it's to be expected: When you see a truly innovative video game here at E3's cavalcade of unveilings, there's a good shot you'll see it again next year. And the next year. And so on.

Killzone 2, a sci-fi shooter for the PlayStation 3, is one of the worst offenders. A trailer for the game debuted at E3 in 2005, and Sony later had to admit that the footage wasn't, in fact, actual gameplay. At last year's E3 expo, the game was demoed, live--one of the developers was on stage, controller in hand, as a kind of visual mea culpa--and it looked incredible. Now, it's 2008, and the game still isn't out. It's playable as an alpha here at the show, but the final version won't be released until February 2009 ... at the earliest.

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But Killzone 2 has plenty of company. In a gaming industry that relies on toxic amounts of hype, E3 repeat offenders are business as usual. And this year's show is no different: At the end of Sony's press conference, we watched a trailer for Massive Action Game, or MAG (a placeholder title)--a shooter that promises online multiplayer battles with a whopping 236 players at a time. But the trailer had zero in-game footage, and beyond some teased details (character growth will be really important, players will be grouped in squads), Sony didn't announce anything concrete. Which means we'll be seeing it at next year's E3, and maybe again in 2010.

So we took advantage of finally getting our hands on some of the most anticipated titles that have showed up from E3 to E3--Killzone 2, Spore, LittleBigPlanet and Too Human--to give them a hard look as they make their way to stores (probably). How does the gameplay measure up to the hype? And was all that development time worth the wait? Read on for my reviews, and the bottom line on hype springing eternal.

Killzone 2

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It's the most hyped of the bunch, but it's not necessarily the best. Killzone 2 still looks fantastic, visually-speaking. The controls are tight, and the art direction, with nearly all color drained from the shattered environments, is gorgeous. Whatever time Sony has spent fine-tuning the look and feel of this game has been well-spent.

Too bad the gameplay feels stale. Nearly every moment of the demo we played was a heavily scripted vignette, complete with a computer-controlled teammate who knows how to kick or shoulder open doors (apparently, you skipped that part of boot camp), tells you where to go, and occasionally stands in a doorway, silently challenging you to throw some friendly fire into his back. The opening firefight of the level we played was particularly aggravating, since the enemy machine gun positions on a bridge are manned by an infinite number of soldiers. No matter how many headshots you pull off, another target is going to warp into existence. Your teammates are apparently disabled, or afraid of explosives, because they keep yelling at you to grab a rocket launcher that's right next to them, and hit the boxes of ammo that have been placed, dubiously, right behind the machine gun nests. The bridge blows up, and you can proceed, knowing that in a few minutes your unique ability to aim a rocket launcher and pull the trigger will be literally indispensable.

Bottom Line: An impressive shooter, but aside from the stunning graphics, there's nothing revolutionary to see here.

Spore

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Two years ago,Spore was being demoed in a small, private room, and everyone was blown away. This year, it's playable, and after spending an hour with the full Mac version, we have good news: Somehow, Spore is better than all of the hype.

Every single aspect of the game seems to be customizable, from the look of each building in your city to the notes, instruments and rhythm of the soundtrack. Plenty has been written about Spore, but it bears repeating: Will Wright, legendary creator of Sim City and The Sims, has outdone himself. Spore feels not only addictive, but morally challenging. During the Creature stage, when your evolving species is meeting other creatures, you can choose to be social or aggressive. After the first act of genocide, I never wanted to kill again, which is saying a lot for a first-person shooter addict. It's not that the violence is frowned upon--although Darren Montgomery, senior product manager for the game, did say that Spore is harder when you're always aggressive--but it's not glorified. And the skull and crossbones that popped up on the map when I'd wiped out a species said it all. Of course, that's just one aspect of a game that looks bigger, more epic and more mind-expanding than any game to date. If that sounds like hyperbole, you haven't played Spore.

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Bottom Line: An unprecedented, landmark accomplishment that's worth waiting another six years. Lucky for us, it's showing up in September.

LittleBigPlanet

It was one of our favorite games last year, and it's as giddy and ingenious as ever. Like Spore, the emphasis in LBP comes with user-generated content, since players can spend an unlimited amount of time crafting whole levels, which can be downloaded and played by others.

But also like Spore, the reason this game works is because of the tools provided by the developers. From the stencils you use to paint your creations to the characters' outfits and adorable, toothless belly laughs, this game manages to be cute but also ridiculously smart. The controls are intuitive, allowing you to resize and rotate an object quickly. And all of the creative features aside, the gameplay is more fun than it needs to be, with small touches like the smooth-zooming camera and slightly reduced gravity of the leaping characters, to make multiplayer less frantic and jumps less punitive. And without blathering endlessly about how innovative, unique and downright cool this game is, we'll resort to a cliche: You have to play it, to believe it. After two E3s of LittleBigPlanet, we've crossed over from believers, to zealots.

Bottom Line: Another rare example of much deserved hype. Forget Metal Gear Solid 4 and the Resistance franchise--if there's a reason to buy a PlayStation 3, this is it.

Too Human

The mother of all delayed games,Too Human, an ambitious action RPG game, was originally slated for the PlayStation. The first one. It debuted at E3 nine years ago, but the developers were forced to head back to the drawing board multiple times. We tried the Xbox 360 version two years ago, and it was interesting--a kind of updated Smash TV--but definitely not as revolutionary as its makers, Silicon Knights, were promising. Now, the game is headed for stores in August, and it's once again playable at E3.

We'll avoid talking about the developers' plans to release a full trilogy, because this game will be lucky if it achieves even moderate success. With a month to go, the graphics are buggy, with few textures to speak of, and the ones that are there popping in and out. The gameplay is almost unbelievably boring. During a fight with one boss, a machine interpretation of the legendary monster, Grendel, any notion of this game breaking new ground was shattered. The villain's weakness? A pulsing red area, that happened to be squarely in the middle of its chest. While it lumbered after me, with no hope of catching up, it occasionally launched some flying bad guys. The fight was long, slow, and repetitive, a throwback to a previous era of gaming. It was also uninspired, which is particularly disappointing for a game with this much creative bluster. Who cares if the story is about a lone god defending humanity against an increasingly robotic pantheon of fellow deities, when smacking around endless hordes of enemies is this boring?

Bottom Line: The worst has happened: Too Human finally showed up, and it's just another game. If it had shown up unannounced, it might have been a sleeper hit. But with nine years of promises behind it, this game is a major disappointment--and a cautionary tale for the rest of the industry.